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Thursday, April 10, 2014

The blame game

As soon as the ill-fated Israeli-Palestinian talks came
towards their predictable end, the blame game started. And as usual the
powers-that-be blame Israel, although the facts would indicate that the
Palestinians were preparing their talk-ending unilateral actions well in advance
of the talks actually ending.

Let's take a look at the sequence of events. Two weeks
before the talks ended in mid-March the Palestinian side announced that if the
talks failed they would go immediately to multiple UN agencies to ask for
unilateral recognition of their State. This is contrary to the spirit and letter
of all previous UN declarations that require a negotiated end to the conflict.
As a consequence of this announcement and under pressure from members of his
coalition government, PM Netanyahu decided first to delay, then after further
negative Palestinian comments, he cancelled the final Palestinian prisoner
release. The point was, why should he release dangerous prisoners if the
Palestinians were already saying that the talks were over and they were going to
take unilateral action. Then two days after the cancellation of the prisoner
release PA President Abbas held a meeting of the Fatah-PLO Council and announced
the application by the PA to 15 UN and international agencies, including several
treaties and conventions that are restricted to States alone. These
applications were then filed the next day, so the PA had arranged and organized
this talk-destroying action well in advance, while US Secty. of State Kerry was
still bleating his hopes that the talks would continue. In fact he flew all
the way from Europe to Israel in order to meet with Abbas, but when Abbas made
this announcement he turrned around and went back without having been
consulted.

Now you would think that Kerry would be mad at Abbas and
would publicly criticize these unilateral actions. But, no, instead he
criticized Israel. Kerry said that Netanyahu failed to release the prisoners and
the talks went "pouf." Many people have a hard time understanding why he would
blame PM Netanyahu for the Palestinians taking this unilateral action. The
reason is simple, the Arabs. The US tries to maintain friendly relations with a
host of Arab countries from Morocco to Saudi Arabia (there are 22 of them).
Blaming the Palestinians for the break-down of the talks would result in
negative reactions from the Arab countries, while blaming Israel only results in
negative reaction from the Israelis and their mainly Jewish supporters. Obama
and Kerry have no doubt therefore who they should blame, irrespective of the
facts.

Then PM Netanyahu announced that in response to the
Palestinian unilateral actions he will ban further contacts between high Israeli
Government officials and their Palestinian counterparts, except for the peace
talks. This was a minimal response that he could make. But, of course then
Kerry and others criticized this reaction as adding to the breakdown of the
talks. Others in the Coalition have suggested more extreme unilateral actions
in response to the Palestinian actions, for example Naftali Bennett of the Bayit
Yehudi party has proposed that Israel annex those areas where Jewish settlers
constitute the majority, which would be within Israel in any negotiated
agreement anyway (the so-called "land swaps"). However, so far Netanyahu has
resisted these calls for a strong reaction. But, if the PA goes ahead with
these applications and gains more recognition, you can expect PM Netanyahu to
"punish" them for their unilateral actions without negotiations. The US should support its ally Israel in this response, but they will
not.